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Hotshot bots

Vacuuming the floor has become something of a spectator sport in the Corke household, where a little disc-shaped device skirts its own way around the lounge.

"It's able to avoid the stairs and so on. I stand there and watch the thing, which of course completely defeats the purpose," says the robot's owner, Peter Corke.

Chances are, devices like the Roomba iRobot, its Electrolux rival Trilobite or their automated lawnmower cousins will be how most of us come to experience robots in our daily lives - as domestic helpers relieving us of boring tasks.

If they are not doing chores around the home, robots might try entertaining us instead, in the form of sophisticated toys such as the remote-controlled Robosapien or Sony's puppy-bot Aibo.

It's a much broader spectrum for Corke, however, who is a CSIRO scientist and robotics expert. He and other researchers around the world are trying to get machines to jump their toughest hurdles yet.

Many of the world's robots are busy welding cars together but researchers are gradually bringing machines out of the factories and into all kinds of other situations.

Robots have been used for defusing bombs, exploring other planets or going into places humans fear to tread. "Robotics is advancing in jobs that are dangerous and dirty," Corke says. "The mining industry is a major focus for CSIRO."

Workers who don't need lunch breaks are also a tantalising prospect for some employers, but humans are a hard act to follow. The abilities we take for granted, such as seeing, reacting and moving, are some of the most difficult for robots to grasp.

"When we first started trying to do these things [in robotics], we tried to do things that humans did. Scientists underestimated what we do. We have a lot of brain and it is a complicated structure," Corke explains. So, researchers also started taking their cues from simpler creatures.

"A desktop PC has more computing power than a bee. The bee can go out, find something and go back and tell its friends," Corke says.

The six-legged RHex is a cockroach-inspired robot with the ability to run on just about any surface. Moving up the food chain, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are working with synthetic foot-hairs modelled on the gecko to help robots climb walls.

Seeing is believing

CSIRO researchers are working on how to give machines vision so they can navigate by sight. It's the kind of ability that can promote a robot from being a remotely controlled vehicle to an autonomous device, making its own decisions.

"Decision-making is the real challenge in robotics," Corke explains, but first of all robots need to be aware of their environment. "The robots in car factories don't make decisions. They're not aware. If there was no car there they probably would not notice and would continue welding in mid air.

"Our environment is very complex and always changing. Sometimes, the chair we sit on is moved. But for a robot to understand the structure of a room is very difficult. In robotics we can solve only very contrived situations. We call it the perception problem."

Corke wants machines to not only see where they are, but to be able to use this information whether they're on land, at sea or in the air. "Now we [CSIRO] are dabbling in flying and underwater robots ... There are various motivations. One is just the technical challenge of being able to do it," Corke says.

Satellite navigation by GPS just won't do in some situations. "GPS doesn't work everywhere. It does not work indoors or near really tall buildings ... If we want to have flying robots, then these have to be able to look at their environment, not rely on GPS," he says.

CSIRO researchers have had some success in getting a robotic plane to recognise its position in the air. "We got it to hover using vision. Holding it steady in the air is harder than you might think," Corke says.

It has to keep its height and stay over the same patch of ground without the assistance of any kind of marker or grid. "Ultimately, we want to be able to program a mission into it and say 'Go there and come back'," Corke says.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are an interesting prospect for military and surveillance purposes. "There's a lot of defence-funded research into aerial robotics, but none of that is done by CSIRO," Corke adds.

Airborne robots can also get data for meteorologists. Melbourne company Aerosonde makes, among other vehicles, a survey robot that will fly into a cyclone to take measurements.

The CSIRO's robotic planes are unlikely to chase storms or take on spy missions. "The models are cheap and not that reliable. The equipment is heavy," Corke says. In addition, if the CSIRO wants to fly unmanned vehicles beyond its own campus it has to lodge a flight plan with the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA).

Experiments with underwater vision and navigation will move ahead from the swimming pool to the sea this month as researchers prepare to put a robotic submarine through its paces. Ultimately, its successors could be used for testing water quality or examining reefs.

"So far we've been using a big swimming pool and testing 1.5m [long] submarine-shaped vehicles with fins, propeller and hooked up with cameras," Corke says.

"Again, we're trying to work out how you navigate when you can't use GPS. Underwater is challenging because there is the movement of fish and seaweed to consider."

"Hollywood robots don't help us at all," Corke says . "After C-3PO, when you show people what we are working on, it's a letdown." It would help if robots were made in greater quantities or could produce more consistent results, he says.

"What I would like to see is robots being prevalent. At the moment they fail much too easily. Until we have robots that are reliable, people won't take them too seriously."

Some machines, even those on the cutting edge or that make a breakthrough, are still essentially one-trick wonders. Honda's humanoid Asimo, a celebrity of robotics, has a relatively simple claim to fame. It can walk up stairs. Another machine, called a HelpMate, is a courier in US hospitals. "It is essentially a big box on wheels, delivering drugs, meals and medical specimens, because nurses have better things to do," says Corke.

More recently, a robot created at Carnegie Mellon University can fold paper with suction cups to perform the Japanese art of origami. It may not sound all that useful on its own, but the implications cut deep. If a robot can better manipulate fiddly bits of paper, perhaps it can work better with the soft tissues of the human body.

In neurosurgery, robots can already assist surgeons with the steadiest of hands in delicate procedures. Which raises the question: who - or what - would you prefer to hold the scalpel?

"Robots are probably going to be more accurate than surgeons," says Corke. Yet even he's not comfortable with the idea. "Personally, I would be a little worried about it."

Bots in space

Driving through an alien landscape, NASA's six-wheeled rovers are the stars of Mars exploration. Now the agency is looking for a little robotic help for another matter - the Hubble space telescope.

NASA has put out a request for proposals for robots to take on the job of servicing the telescope, which is in need of repairs and may stop functioning by 2008. Astronauts were originally planned for the tasks but Shuttle missions with human teams were cancelled in the wake of the Columbia disaster.

Infofile
Movie stars and sporting heroes are not the only ones to get the fanfare.

Carnegie Mellon University has a Hall of Fame just for robots, recognising the contribution of metal friends both real and fictional (hey, some of them have personality!). This year Astroboy and C-3PO join Honda's Asimo, as judged by science and science fiction greats such as Arthur C. Clarke.

Previous inductees include the Mars Pathfinder and Hal 9000.

Robosapien

Price: $179.95

Rating: ****

I've wanted a robot for as long as I could remember. It's one of those childhood fantasies that developed after overdosing on too many cartoons and sci-fi movies.

Robosapien (pictured opposite) is a machine in the best tradition of robots. It has a humanoid form (not the weird neither-cat-nor-dog look of the Sony Aibo pet robot), grappler claws for hands, bipedal motion and oversized hulk-like proportions.

It's not an autonomous robot like the Aibo, though. There's no intelligence to speak of. It doesn't learn, remember or play soccer.

It runs entirely from instructions received through an infrared remote control and is designed to amuse 8-year-olds with burping and fart noises (of which they never seem to tire). Then again, it's a fraction of the price of an Aibo and it does a pretty cool dance accompanied by its own music.

What the Robosapien does is walk (more a waddle), make pre-recorded sounds and comments, gesticulate wildly with its long arms (that sometimes throw it off-balance) and bump into things and say "ouch".

The magic is in its movement. Robosapien is designed by a former NASA robotics physicist, Mark Tilden, whose expertise is evident in the fluid motion of its arms, legs and waist. Each joint is motorised and the pair of D-cell batteries, cleverly located in each foot, helps lower the centre of gravity and keeps it balanced when walking.

The best part of Robosapien, though, is that it is programmable. You can record a combination of movements to play back in response to a tap on its body, a sharp sound or when touched on one of the sensors on its feet or hands.

You can also link a series of programs together for a long routine. Unfortunately, you lose the program when you switch off the robot. - Simon Tsang